Once the many layers of vinyl flooring were removed – in some case 4 deep – it was time to tackle the paint. After all, who said that this would be easy?  Cue the Peel Away 6.

Before: go to work my little friend.

It took me a few tries to figure out how much of the stuff to apply and how long to leave it to do its thing. The package directions said to put between 1/16 and 1/8 of an inch and to let it sit between 2 and 48 hours – all of which seemed very wishy washy to me.

Through trial and error, I learned that the application should look like a poorly frosted cake. To achieve this, a Rubbermaid spatula works best: slather it on and come back about 20 hours later to scrape.

During: the goop is ready to be scraped off.

And scrape I did. With a putty knife, a scraper, steel wool, wire brushes, regular brushes and liberal amounts of mineral spirits (I used the low VOC kind – yet I found that I am allergic to it and it did a number on my face).

After: most of the paint is gone.

Some portions of the floor are quite damaged. We did a test sand and fake finish (with beeswax oil) and it looks like this:

Hoping for nice floors

After going through about 3 gallons of Peel Away 6, I have about 2/3 of the top floor done. My arms and hands are super sore, and I am really hoping that in addition to beautiful floors, I come out of this project with some awesome Michelle Obama arms. Here’s to hoping….